0

The Europas – Europe’s tech startup awards – hit Berlin on Tuesday evening with over 1,000 guests gathering to celebrate the best of the continent’s tech entrepreneurship.

ZeptoLab, the Moscow-based makers of the smash hit Cut The Rope game took the ‘winner of winner’s’ Grand Prix award after hitting 300 million downloads, marking it out as potentially the next Rovio/AngryBirds killer combination. Another gaming firm, Wooga, snatched the People’s Choice Award. The Berlin-based social gaming company won after 300,000 votes were cast by Europe’s tech industry. London’s Wonga was named Best “Heavyweight” Startup after a year, which saw the online short-term loans pioneer’s profits surge. The best Startup Founders were named as the team behind science platform Mendeley. And Atomico was named Best VC of the year in Europe by the judges.

As someone who created the awards four years ago – initially just in a bar in London – it’s been fascinating for me to see the scene grow. The Europas were an order of magnitude bigger this year, with over 1,000 entries making it a tremendously difficult task for the 75 judges – drawn from entrepreneurs, investors and the media – to pick out the winners. From recent successes like Sketchfab, to titans of the industry like the Hall of Fame winner Niklas Zennstrom, the awards showed that, despite its fragmented nature and a tough economic climate, Europe’s startup scene now has a real head of steam.

The judges included partners from Kleiner Perkins, Accel, Index, Google Ventures and CrunchFund, entrepreneurs like Jawed Karim (founder of YouTube and Youniversity Ventures) and Michael Birch (founder of Bebo, Monkey Inferno) and Lady Gaga’s manager and angel investor Troy Carter. Journalists from Europe’s tech news scene, including The NextWeb, VentureBeat, Reuters and some of Europe’s leading blogs also took part in the process. It was also great to see some traditional firms, as well as a few Silicon Valley giants, supporting the awards.

Paddy Cosgrave, The Europas’ co-organiser and founder of the Web Summit series of events in Dublin and London, said: “These awards show just how hot European startups are right now. It was fantastic to see so many people from the community together to celebrate the level of innovation and excitement out there.”